I regretted not calling a state of emergency earlier than I did during the Port Hills fire in 2017. Like Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown I too based my decision on the advice from those responding to the event
Opinion: The release of the Auckland Flood Response Review is noteworthy for a range of reasons.
First and foremost is it has been delivered in a timely fashion while everything is still fresh in people’s minds.
I was one who felt the review was too soon, because of the risk key players would be distracted from their primary focus at a critical time. However, this concern appears to have been unfounded.
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The review team, led by the former Police Commissioner Mike Bush has done a superb job in a very short space of time.
The result is a very valuable document, and its findings must not only be embedded in Tāmaki Makaurau’s emergency preparedness planning, but also across the country.
It should be compulsory reading for everyone who plays a role in the civil defence and emergency management arrangements in New Zealand.
I am a big fan of timelines. They take you on the journey of events as they unfolded. Reading this timeline (appendix four), I find it hard to describe my feelings.
After everything we have been through in different parts of the country, and after every ‘lesson learned’ review that has been published, have we learned nothing?
When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s impossible to ask the right questions. That was obvious here.
The writer Douglas Adams wrote: “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
Some of the issues the report highlights were already identified in Ōtautahi in a ‘lessons learnt’ report after the Port Hills fire in 2017.
As that report states, I regretted not calling a state of emergency earlier than I did. I too had based my decision on the advice I received from those responding to the fire. As was the case in Auckland, the focus was on whether the emergency could not be dealt with by the emergency services, as opposed to whether it required a significant and co-ordinated response.
What saddens me is that if the report we commissioned had been read by those advising the Mayor of Auckland at the time of the impending floods, surely an earlier call would have been made.
It is worth remembering Auckland is a unitary authority where seven city and district councils merged with the regional council to form a super city, and this was the first time a state of emergency had been called.
This 2017 report stated: "An earlier declaration would have provided a warning to residents of the risks they may be facing, lifted the profile of the event and given greater confidence that all resources were being applied to the event."
This consideration was completely absent from any of the advice that would go to the mayor that night. As soon as he was asked to, he signed the declaration of the state of emergency.
What is blatantly obvious is that he should have been asked to do so a lot sooner than he was.
I told the Port Hills fire review that ‘we look back not to blame but to understand’.
And that is a key function of post-event reviews.
Accountability is one thing, but I feel many of the questions being asked about this review are focused on who should be blamed.
The blame game is a pointless exercise when faced with the scale of systemic failure I could read in the timeline alone, not to mention the Swiss cheese effect of things lining up to create a hole in what otherwise could have been a much better response.
We need to understand what happened and the context in which it happened so we can ensure we learn from our mistakes.
It is worth remembering Auckland is a unitary authority where seven city and district councils merged with the regional council to form a super city, and this was the first time a state of emergency had been called.
The report highlighted the impact of this: "Prior to Auckland amalgamation, detailed plans were held at local board level and perhaps better reflected local conditions, resources, and partnerships. Some of this detail appears to have been lost when lists were revisited from a super city perspective."
I don’t think anyone should underestimate the significance of this finding. For me, it reinforces how much centralisation can inadvertently destroy the all-important local relationships and networks that are essential in a crisis. We know this from experience. When will we ever learn?
The report identifies an incomprehensible failure to consider marae as potential civil defence centres, despite their experience in responding to community welfare needs in a range of crises throughout the country. The importance of relationships with iwi, Māori has all been documented, and yet it was ignored here.
In addition, there was a brand-new mayor, but more significantly a new mayor’s office that had not built the links and developed relationships to support the mayor in this vital aspect of crisis leadership. As a former mayor, I was left asking how on earth this could have been allowed to happen.
When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s impossible to ask the right questions. That was obvious here.
And that’s why these reviews are so important. But their true value is only realised when their findings are put into practice. A reference in this report to the 2018 Smol report on another significant Auckland storm in April that year that has still not been fully actioned is more than disappointing, but sadly not surprising.
The lessons we learned in Ōtautahi after the fire were embedded into practice, and we were able to demonstrate a much better approach in the events that followed.
I am not sure if there is a central repository for these reports, or whether anyone is charged with analysing them and distributing the findings to all councils, but maybe that is the bigger picture issue that needs to be addressed.
The report says the move to supercity planning for emergencies seemed to have contributed to an optimism bias that Auckland Council’s size and systems could handle anything.
At the end of the day, everything is local, when it matters the most.
